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Four thematic areas have been identified as needing increased science in society inputs by our EJO partners: some types of biomass and land use conflicts, nuclear energy, mining conflicts, waste disposal (particularly ship dismantling), and oil and gas extraction conflicts together with climate justice.
- Nuclear Power
EJOLT will contribute to an improved understanding among European citizens and policy-makers of nuclear power production through raising awareness on various stages of nuclear energy production. A cost-benefit analysis of nuclear power vs. renewable energy sources is being carried out that will help refute one of the most common myths of nuclear energy: its economic viability.
EJOLT further aims to build capacity to identify the radiological impacts of uranium mining, the first step of the nuclear chain and crucially ignored when analysing impacts of nuclear energy. We have carried out fieldtrips in Namibia, Malawi, Bulgaria and Brazil. Moreover, we aim to emphasize scientific debates over uncertain risks at the whole nuclear chain, and examine legal avenues for environmental enforcement in involved countries.
- Oil extraction and Climate Justice
EJOLT will provide critiques of the broadened geography of fossil fuels extractions, in the context of climate justice. Chief concerns are related to the loss of biodiversity, sensitive areas, human rights violations and the technologies used. We’ll make guidelines for different approaches to keep oil in the ground, including case studies from the Yasuní National Park in Ecuador and the Niger Delta in Nigeria. Institutional design and experimentation with different real democratic processes related to conflicts, such as community consultations, will be studied. We’ll make and publish a compendium of local referendums in resource extraction conflicts over the past 10 years and share lessons learned from court cases related to resource extraction conflicts. The training materials will provide a reference tool illustrating a range of practices in situations of environmental conflict. We also examine the deepened reach and legitimation of financial markets under the guise of the ‘green economy’, that seeks to rationalise and legitimise false solutions to climate change while reinforcing old systems of exploitation. This includes carbon markets (extending to water, air and land grabbing), mega-dams as well as technocratic fixes that ignore the primary cause of pollution and degradation from source ie: accountability.
- Mining and Shipbreaking
To study the links between the increased metabolism of the economy and environmental damage, EJOLT looks at mining conflicts (of precious metals & bulk materials) and waste disposal conflicts (ship breaking, e-waste exports and waste incineration). Local communities occupying ‘priceless sites’ oppose mining in ecologically sensitive areas (such as Intag, Ecuador) or certain technological practices, such as the use of cyanide, and other corporate practices. We shall elaborate on risk assessment and undertake work to publicize violations of the Basel Treaty on the export of toxic waste (such as European ships dismantled in Alang and Sosiya, India). We will conduct a legal analysis of liability regimes in national, international and European laws.
Sharing of landmark cases on mining and ship-breaking conflicts worldwide will help us to elaborate online training materials. Our aim is to have a debate on the health risks and ecosystem destruction that come with resource extraction. In the end we will develop strategies for legal redress and public consultation in ways that take local activist knowledge into account.
- Biomass and Land conflicts
Industrial tree plantations and land grabbing are among the principal causes of deforestation and dispossession of the rural poor. Large-scale monocultures for pulp and paper production devastate landscapes and communities; while rich corporations and countries are hungrily buying up land in poor food-insecure countries for export. Owners of transnational companies, financiers, buyers of the pulp and crops produced are indirectly responsible for serious negative impacts on rural communities who depend on this land and face losing their livelihoods.
The World Rainforest Movement and GRAIN are mapping land-based cases of Environmental Injustice and providing analysis and support for campaigns on ‘landgrabbing’. EJOLT aims to provide valuable input into the debate about future EU energy use and to help underline that food sovereignty is the solution to feeding the world and supporting small farmers and their families. Many argue that energy crop production for EU energy consumption from cars to heating and electricity is displacing food crops in the global South. Our work will help answer questions such as: ‘What volumes of imports are involved and how much environmental space in the South is being taken up through European biofuel policies?’